Part 11 (1/2)

Already the sheen of the eyeball was clouded by the corrosive liquid

At Jake's touch there was no blinking reflex, and he knew that the animal was dead

He turned to find that Vicky had not obeyed his instruction to run She stood frozen where he had left her, naked and vulnerable, so that he felt his heart shi+ft within him and he went to her quickly

With a sob she flew into his arth Jake knew that the embrace was the consequence of terror not affection, but as his own heart-beat slowed and the tingle of the adrenalin in his blood receded, he thought that he had achieved a solid advantage If you save a girl's life, she just has to take you seriously, he reasoned, and grinned to himself still a little unsteadily All his senses were enhanced by the high point of recent danger He could smell the perfumed soap and the stink of a clarity the sliirl's body pressed to his and the smooth warmth of her skin under his hands

”Oh Jake!” she whispered brokenly, and with sudden aching certainty he knew that in this ht here on the black rock bank of the Awash, beside the ware was certain and his handsinstant confirmation her body was quick and responsive, and her face turned up to his Her lips trembled and he could feel her breath upon hison down there?” Gareth's voice rang across the h above them He had one of the Lee Enfield bolt-action rifles under his ar down to the body and slipping off his moleskin jacket to cover her nakedness

The jacket reached halfway down her thighs and folded volu like a kitten in a snowstor was broken and thick

”Don't worry about it,” Jake called up at Gareth ”You weren't in tiroped in his hip pocket and Produced a large, slightly grubby handkerchief, which Vicky accepted with a tearful, quivering set your pants on, before the whole gang arrives to give you a hand” regorius was so impressed that he was speechless for several hly esteerown adult lion, The warrior who accoe of his courage and earns the respect of all The man who shoots his lion is respected, and the orius had never heard of one killed with a single rock and a bottle of aorius skinned out the carcass with his own hands

Before he had finished, the black pinioned vultures were sailing in wide circles overhead He left the naked pink carcass lying in the river bed, and carried the wet skin up to the bivouac where Jake was fretting to continue the trek towards the Wells He was irreverent in his disdain of the trophy, and Greg tried to explain it to hist o, people will point you out to each other”

”Fine Greg That's just fine Noill you kindly haul arse

”I will have a war bonnetinsisted, as he strapped the bundle of wet skin to the sponson of Jake's car ”With the hair corand”

”It could only be an improveree it's been a beautiful honeymoon, and Jake is a splendid lad but like he said, let's move on, before I am violently ill” As they orius fell in beside Jake and quietly showed him the mushroomed copper-jacketed bullet he had removed from its niche in the pelvic bone of the carcass

Jake paused to exa it in the palm of his hand

”Ninecalibre not le rifle in Ethiopia that would fire this bullet,” said Greg seriously ”It's a foreigner's rifle”

”No need to blow the bugle yet,” said Jake, and flicked the bullet back to hiorius almost turned away, then said shyly, ”Jake, even if the lion was already wounded it's still the bravest thing I ever heard of I have often hunted for them, but never killed one yet” Jake was touched by the boy's adhly and slapped his shoulder

”I'll leave the next one for you,” he pros of the River Awash through the savannah grassland,in towards the her and clearer into the sky The ridges of rock and the deep-forested gorges came into hazy focus, like a wall across the sky

Suddenly they intersected the old caravan road, hitting it at a point where the steep banks of the Awash flattened a little The ford of the river had been deeply worn over the ages by the passage of laden beasts of burden and the men who drove them, so that the many footpaths down each bank were deep trenches in the red earth, that jinked to avoid any large boulder or ridge of rock

The threeshovel and mattock in a fine mist of red dust that powdered their hair and bodies They filled in the uneven ground and deeply worn trenches, levering the boulders free and letting theht the deathlike sleep of utter exhaustion that ignored the ache of abused muscle and burst blisters

Jake had the and levelling, shovelling and packing the dry hard-baked earth, until at last each bank had been shaped into a rough but passable rah and he stood in the turret, soant, under the fine layer of red dust He grinned at Jake and shouted draitimi carborunduine roared and he went bounding and sliding down the steep ramp of newly turned earth, bounced and jolted across the black rock bottom and flew at the far bank

When the wheels spun viciously in the loose red earth, blowing out a stororius were ready to throw their weight against it and this was just sufficient to keep the vehicle round its way up the al under the thrust of the spinning wheels, until at last it burst out over the top, and Gareth shut down the power and juht, noe can tow the other cars up the bank,” and he produced a celebratory cheroot

”What was that piece of dog Latin you recited just then Jake asked, as he accepted the cheroot

”Old fa Swales at Hastings, gin court and in the knocking shops of the world”

aW hat does it ain as he lit the cheroots ”It rind you down”” One at a tiht the other three cars down into the ravine, and hitched the, Gareth towing, and Jake and Gregorius shoving, they hauled them up on to the level, sunbaked soil of Ethiopia It was late afternoon when at last they fell panting in the long shadow thrown by Miss Wobbly's chassis, to rest and sorius told theround all the way to the Wells,” and then he smiled at the three of them hite teeth in a smooth honey-coloured face

”Welcome to Ethiopia!”

”Quite frankly, old -chap, I'dat Harry's Bar in the rue Daunou,” said Gareth soberly which is exactly what I will be doing not long after Toffee Sagud presses a purse of gold into my milk-white hand” Jake stood up suddenly and peered out into the dancing heat waves that still poured fro liquid Then he ran quickly across to his own car and leapt up into the turret, e seconds later with his binoculars

The others stood up uneasily and watched hilasses

”Rider,” said Jake

”Howthis way fast ”Gareth e into the breech

They saw hie, so that at one moment horse and rider seemed to float free of the earth, and then sink back and swellto elephantine proportions in the heat-tortured air Dust drifted behind the running horse and it was only at close range that the rider caorius let out a bellow like a rutting stag and raced out into the sunshi+ne to meet the newcomer In a brilliant display of horse white stallion so abruptly that he plunged and reared, cutting at the air with his fore hooves With white robes billowing, he flung hiorius's widespread arether rapturously, the stranger suddenly seeorius's arh and birdlike

Then hand in hand, looking into each other's faces, they caroup that waited by the cars

”My God, it's another girl,” said Gareth with a the loaded rifle aside, and they all stared at the slim, dark-eyed child in her late teens with a skin like dusky silk and i lashes

”May I introduce Sara Sagud?” asked Gregorius ”She is hter, and she is also without doubt the prettiest lady in Ethiopia”

”I see what you orius, introduced each of the aristocratic face with the serenity of an Egyptian princess, the delicate features and chiselled nose of a Nefertiti, changed instantly to a sparkling childlike mischievousness

”I knew you must cross the Awash here, it is the only place and I caorius pointed out proudly

”My grandfather insists that all his children and his grand

children learn to speak English He is a great lover of the English”

”You speak it well,” Vicky congratulated Sara, although in fact her English was heavily accented, and the girl turned to her, s anew